Story, Volume I

by Dai Smith

  ‘Come on, Sam. The Roman Wall!’ He scorned the helping hand and ran on to the wall. The wall stretched for as far as the eye could see, along the topmost ridge of the mountain, held together by nothing more than the builder’s ability to balance one stone on top of another.

  ‘Get up on it, Sam!’ his brother urged. ‘Take a look.’

  It was like looking over the edge of the world. Below him lay MacDermitt’s domain. The beautiful landlocked valley of Blaen Pergwm. Its shape reminded him of the fans the girls had carried in the school play, Princess Chrysanthemum. Tucked down, hundreds of feet below, MacDermitt’s cottage was the thumb that drew the centre folds together. The lovely golden fabric of the fan rippled like a summer sea, as the tall mountain grass bent its head to the soft breeze. Dotted out like painted flowers were the pickers, their heads bowed and deft fingers urgently plucking the ripe fruit from its stalk.

  ‘Come on, mark your name on the wall,’ shouted Rafferty. Alan had already finished scraping his name through the powder-dry moss. It was as well; two summers away lurked the consumption.

  ‘You have a rest, Sam. I’ll do your name for you,’ offered Owen. ‘Samuel Thomas 1932’, Owen finished off his name and the date neatly. He was glad Owen was his brother.

  ‘No good picking on top by here, better go down a bit,’ organised Rafferty.

  When they reached the first group of pickers, Owen warned, ‘Mind where you’re putting your feet now, in case you step into one of their baskets.’

  Mrs Morgan and her children made up the first group, all picking into helpers, old teacups, that when full were tipped into two fourteen-pound wicker baskets. The whinberries, still in their powdered bloom, lay like a purple cushion against the shining brown wicker walls. If there was such a thing as professional whinberry pickers in Banwen, then this family was it. When a basket would become full, one of the children would take it down the mountain and give it to Shurry, the bus conductor. At Neath he would give the basket to the man who kept the centre stall at the market.

  Four or five pence a pound, Mrs Morgan got for her whinberries. A full day’s work brought them in seven or eight shillings, if they were lucky. They found a place to pick, but only after religiously observing the laws of ‘Bara-y-cwtch’. This was a custom that designated territorial rights to the picker already on the spot. The size of the allotment was nowhere stated but usually the bigger and more ferocious the picker on the spot was, the larger the area of his preserve became.

  There were whinberries everywhere; how he wished he had brought two of his father’s old tommy boxes, or a bigger tin. The first whinberry he picked burst between his fingers. Never mind, he thought, there’s plenty more. The next one dropped into a tangle of stalks and leaves. Then the insects, that until then had been busy feeding on the long grass, found him. They buzzed their inquiries around his head, in his hair, into his ears and nostrils, along his bare legs and down his shirtfront. The others picked diligently, insects or no insects.

  ‘All right, Sam?’ Owen called.

  ‘Yes, all right.’ He looked down at the few badly mauled whinberries that rattled around the bottom of the tin. And about two hours later, he could have done without Rafferty announcing to the world, ‘Hey! Look lads, poor old Sammy hasn’t covered the bottom of his tin yet.’

  They stopped to eat. Owen gave him the sandwiches from the bottom of the pack, because they had stayed the freshest. But not even the banana sandwiches and the ginger pop improved his efficiency. Then it was time to go home. The bottom of his tommy box was covered by about two inches of whinberries, no more; and that included squashed whinberries, red whinberries, not to mention the bits of grass and pieces of stalk.

  The pledges he had so readily made weighed on him. His feet dragged themselves through the bracken, not wanting to carry him to where he would have to confess that those pledges would not be kept. In the evening light, he was frightened by the massiveness of the mountain’s dark curves. He would never come after whinberries again, never. Nor would he, he was going to think, ever come on this ugly mountain again, but stopped himself, thinking that perhaps he’d better wait until he got home first.

  At the side of the house, Owen took the lid of his tin: ‘Tip yours in here, Sam.’

  He opened his tin and looked at the jammy mess.

  ‘Go on. Never mind, tip ’em in, Sam.’

  Their father was in the back yard, legging a mandrill. He looked up and smiled, ‘How’s it going, Owen-Sam?’

  He grinned back at the smiling man and the fear of the mountain flew from him.

  The table was laid for supper, and the kitchen full of the smell of newly-pressed linen their mother was folding on to the airer.

  ‘Well then?’ She stood there, with a snow-white pillow slip over her hands, like a muff.

  Owen lifted the lid of his tin; the Christmas biscuit tin was full to within an inch from the top.

  ‘Sam and me managed this much between us, Mam.’ He looked at Owen; Owen was looking at their mother, looking at her eyes. Looking for what only a son can see in the eyes of his mother. And no man ever born has seen it in any other place. In that instant of light, you bask, you bathe; you become the boy of pure gold.

  * * *

  ‘Come on, Taff, move!’

  The bump against the jetty brought him to his feet. He waited to follow Bagley up the rope ladder. The loop he had made in the cotton bandolier slipped. He fastened it to the ‘D’ buckle of his pack and shinned up the ladder after Bagley. Bagley bent to help him over the edge of the jetty. He saw it coming through the air towards him. For a moment, he thought it was a bundle of rags. Until it thumped down heavily on the deck in front of him. The mouth wide open, showing strong white teeth bloodstained from having almost bitten the tongue in half. He rose to his feet and his eyes met the eyes of the Indian sepoy, who had booted the head at them. The sepoy stopped grinning.

  ‘Taffy!’ Bagley’s voice was a mixture of impatience and concern, something the young Englishman often felt at his comrade’s seemingly unending ability to wander into trouble. They ran across the jetty, over the road and jumped through the window of a bank. They landed up to the tops of their boots in money. They picked it up by the armful, useless paper money. They kicked it around.

  ‘Bagley! Thomas!’ They ran out into the street to where the captain’s shout had come from and formed into Indian file with the rest. Now they had to make their way through the city to the main railway station. He looked down and let the worthless paper money, still in his hand, slip through his fingers. And thought of the death head, the matted blood-soaked hair a mother had once washed and gently brushed into curls. The eyes, so full of the terror of death, a father had looked into to see the reflection of his own dream. Of the torn and bruised lips, pressing and receiving loving kisses.

  The sun blazed down, turning the green of their shirts to black with rivers of sweat and scattering the stench of death to every corner of this once shining city.

  ‘Right! Everybody got one up the spout! And check your safety catches!’ Sergeant Hopper’s voice banged around the empty street.

  The soft, gentle breath of a mountain breeze passed across his face, his feet were on mountain bracken and his mouth filled with the clean, clean scent of his mother. He stepped off along the road behind Bagley.

  Thirty yards away, crouched behind a pile of rubble that not long ago had been a shop of sorts, a twenty year old Japanese infantryman felt a pulse racing in his finger as he bent it around the trigger. Knowing the moment he pressed that trigger, his life would end in minutes. His strong, young body smashed to pulp in a hail of tracer, ball and incendiary bullets.

  Carefully, he framed the face of the British soldier in the aperture of his rifle sight, felt the soft warmth of the palms of his mother’s hands against his temples, sucked in a deep sigh and pressed the trigger.

  WARD ‘O’ 3 (B)

  Alun Lewis

  I

  Ward ‘O’ 3 (b) was, and
doubtless still is, a small room at the end of the Officers’ Convalescent Ward which occupies one wing of the rectangle of one-storeyed sheds that enclose the ‘lily-pond garden’ of No. X British General Hospital, Southern Army, India. The other three wings contain the administrative offices, the Officers’ Surgical Ward and the Officers’ Medical Ward. An outer ring of buildings consists of the various ancillary institutions, the kitchens, the laboratory of tropical diseases, the mortuary, the operating theatres and the X-ray theatre. They are all connected by roofed passageways; the inner rectangle of wards has a roofed verandah opening on the garden whose flagstones have a claustral and enduring aura. The garden is kept in perpetual flower by six black, almost naked Mahratti gardeners who drench it with water during the dry season and prune and weed it incessantly during the rains. It has tall flowering jacarandas, beds of hollyhock and carnation and stock, rose trellises and sticks swarming with sweet peas; and in the arid months of burning heat the geraniums bud with fire in red earthenware pots. It is, by 1943 standards, a good place to be in.

  At the time of which I am writing, autumn 1942, Ward ‘O’ 3 (b), which has four beds, was occupied by Captain A. G. Brownlow-Grace, Lieut. Quartermaster Withers, Lieut. Giles Moncrieff and Lieut. Anthony Weston. The last-named was an RAC man who had arrived in India from home four months previously and had been seriously injured by an anti-tank mine during training. The other three were infantrymen. Brownlow-Grace had lost an arm in Burma six months earlier, Moncrieff had multiple leg injuries there and infantile paralysis as well. ‘Dad’ Withers was the only man over twenty-five. He was forty-four, a regular soldier with twenty-five years in the ranks and three in commission; during this period he had the distinction of never having been in action. He had spent all but two years abroad; he had been home five times and had five children. He was suffering from chronic malaria, sciatica and rheumatism. They were all awaiting a medical board, at which it is decided whether a man should be regraded to a lower medical category, whether he is fit for active or other service, whether he be sent home, or on leave, or discharged the service with a pension. They were the special charge of Sister Normanby, a regular QAIMNS nurse with a professional impersonality that controlled completely the undoubted flair and ‘it’ which distinguished her during an evening off at the Turf Club dances. She was the operating theatre sister; the surgeons considered her a perfect assistant. On duty or off everybody was pleased about her and aware of her; even the old matron whose puritan and sexless maturity abhorred prettiness and romantics had actually asked Sister Normanby to go on leave with her, Sister deftly refusing.

  II

  The floor is red parquet, burnished as a windless lake, the coverlets of the four beds are plum red, the blankets cherry red. Moncrieff hates red, Brownlow-Grace has no emotions about colours, any more than about music or aesthetics; but he hates Moncrieff. This is not unnatural. Moncrieff is a university student, Oxford or some bloody place, as far as Brownlow-Grace knows. He whistles classical music, wears his hair long, which is impermissible in a civilian officer and tolerated only in a cavalry officer with at least five years’ service in India behind him. Brownlow-Grace has done eight. Moncrieff says a thing is too wearing, dreadfully tedious, simply marvellous, wizard. He indulges in moods and casts himself on his bed in ecstasies of despair. He sleeps in a gauzy veil, parades the ward in the morning in chaplies and veil, swinging his wasted hips and boil-scarred shoulders from wash-place to bed; and he is vain. He has thirty photographs of himself, mounted enlargements, in SD and service cap, which he is sending off gradually to a network of young ladies in Greater London, Cape Town where he stayed on the way out, and the chain of hospitals he passed through on his return from Burma. His sickness has deformed him; that also Brownlow-Grace finds himself unable to stomach.

  Moncrieff made several attempts to affiliate himself to Brownlow-Grace; came and looked over his shoulder at his album of photographs the second day they were together, asked him questions about hunting, fishing and shooting on the third day, talked to him about Burma on the third day and asked him if he’d been afraid to die. What a shocker, Brownlow-Grace thought. Now when he saw the man looking at his mounted self-portraits for the umpteenth time he closed his eyes and tried to sleep himself out of it. But his sleep was liverish and full of curses. He wanted to look at his watch but refused to open his eyes because the day was so long and it must be still short of nine. In his enormous tedium he prays Sister Normanby to come at eleven with a glass of iced nimbo pani for him. He doesn’t know how he stands with her; he used to find women easy before Burma, he knew his slim and elegant figure could wear his numerous and expensive uniforms perfectly and he never had to exert himself in a dance or reception from the Savoy in the Strand through Shepheard’s in Cairo to the Taj in Bombay or the Turf Club in Poona. But now he wasn’t sure; he wasn’t sure whether his face had sagged and aged, his hair thinned, his decapitated arm in bad taste. He had sent an airgraph to his parents and his fiancée in Shropshire telling them he’d had his arm off. Peggy sounded as if she were thrilled by it in her reply. Maybe she was being kind. He didn’t care so much nowadays what she happened to be feeling. Sister Normanby, however, could excite him obviously. He wanted to ask her to go to a dinner dance with him at the Club as soon as he felt strong enough. But he was feeling lonely; nobody came to see him; how could they, anyway? He was the only officer to come out alive. He felt ashamed of that sometimes. He hadn’t thought about getting away until the butchery was over and the Japs were mopping up with the bayonet. He’d tried like the devil then, though; didn’t realise he had so much cunning and desperation in him. And that little shocker asking him if he’d been afraid to die. He hadn’t given death two thoughts.

  There was Mostyn Turner. He used to think about Death a lot. Poor old Mostyn. Maybe it was just fancy, but looking at some of Mostyn’s photographs in the album, when the pair of them were on shikari tiger hunting in Belgaum or that fortnight they had together in Kashmir, you could see by his face that he would die. He always attracted the serious type of girl; and like as not he’d take it too far. On the troopship to Rangoon he’d wanted Mostyn to play poker after the bar closed; looked for him everywhere, couldn’t find him below decks, nor in the men’s mess deck where he sometimes spent an hour or two yarning; their cabin was empty. He found him on the boat deck eventually, hunched up by a lifeboat under the stars. Something stopped him calling him, or even approaching him; he’d turned away and waited by the rails at the companionway head till Mostyn had finished. Yes, finished crying. Incredible, really. He knew what was coming to him, God knows how; and it wasn’t a dry hunch, it was something very moving, meant a lot to him somehow. And by God he’d gone looking for it, Mostyn had. He had his own ideas about fighting. Didn’t believe in right and left boundaries, fronts, flanks, rears. He had the guerrilla platoon under his command and they went off into the blue the night before the pukka battle with a roving commission to make a diversion in the Jap rear. That was all. He’d gone off at dusk as casually as if they were on training. No funny business about Death then. He knew it had come, so he wasn’t worrying. Life must have been more interesting to Mostyn than it was to himself, being made that way, having those thoughts and things. What he’d seen of Death that day, it was just a bloody beastly filthy horrible business, so forget it.

  His hands were long and thin and elegant as his body and his elongated narrow head with the Roman nose and the eyes whose colour nobody could have stated because nobody could stare back at him. His hands crumpled the sheet he was clutching. He was in a way a very fastidious man. He would have had exquisite taste if he hadn’t lacked the faculty of taste.

  ‘Messing up your new sheets again,’ Sister Normanby said happily, coming into the room like a drop of Scotch. ‘You ought to be playing the piano with those hands of yours, you know.’

  He didn’t remind her that he only had one had left. He was pleased to think she didn’t notice it.

  ‘Hallo, Sister,’ h
e said, bucking up at once. ‘You’re looking very young and fresh considering it was your night out last night.’

  ‘I took it very quietly,’ she said. ‘Didn’t dance much. Sat in the back of a car all the time.’

  ‘For shame, my dear Celia,’ Moncrieff butted in. ‘Men are deceivers ever was said before the invention of the internal combustion engine and they’re worse in every way since that happened.’

  ‘What is my little monkey jabbering about now,’ she replied, offended at his freedom with her Christian name.

  ‘Have you heard of Gipsy Rose Lee?’ Moncrieff replied inconsequentially. ‘She has a song which says “I can’t strip to Brahms! Can you?”’

  ‘’Course she can,’ said Dad Withers, unobtrusive at the door, a wry old buck, ‘so long as she’s got a mosquito net, isn’t it, Sister?’

  ‘Why do you boys always make me feel I haven’t got a skirt on when I come in here?’ she said.

  ‘Because you can’t marry all of us,’ said Dad.

  ‘Deep, isn’t he?’ she said.

  She had a bunch of newly cut antirrhinums and dahlias, the petals beaded with water, which she put into a bowl, arranging them quietly as she twitted the men. Moncrieff looked at her quizzically as though she had roused conjecture in the psychoanalytical department of his brain.

  ‘Get on with your letter writing, Moncrieff,’ she said without having looked up. He flushed.

  ‘There’s such a thing as knowing too much,’ Dad said to her paternally. ‘I knew a girl in Singapore once, moved there from Shanghai wiv the regiment, she did. She liked us all, the same as nurses say they do. And when she found she liked one more than all the others put together, it come as a terrible shock to her and she had to start again. Took some doing, it did.’

  ‘Dad, you’re crazy,’ she said, laughing hard. ‘A man with all your complaints ought to be too busy counting them to tell all these stories.’ And then, as she was about to go, she turned and dropped the momentous news she’d been holding out to them.